Russia’s Victory Day parade was a greatly reduced spectacle in most respects this year, but it did boast one new feature: a unit of North Korean troops marching alongside Russian forces through Red Square, bearing their own national flag.
Russian President Vladimir Putin met with the North Korean commander after the parade to “express his gratitude,” according to North Korea’s state-run KCNA news service.
Another North Korean state organ, the Rodong Sinmun newspaper, ran a two-page photo article on the march on Sunday. Meanwhile, Russian state media confirmed it was the first Victory Day parade to include North Korean participation.
Victory Day is Russia’s state holiday celebrating victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. During the long authoritarian reign of Vladimir Putin, Victory Day has become a more intensely nationalist affair, loaded with political propaganda that flatters Putin’s regime as the noble and capable heirs of the heroes who defended the motherland from the Nazis.
The parade is usually also an opportunity for Russia to display its military might and show off new weapons, but this year’s event was the first time in 20 years that no heavy equipment rolled through Red Square because so much of Russia’s armor, artillery, and missile launchers have been destroyed in Ukraine, or it remains committed to the invasion Putin launched in 2022.
The 2026 Victory Day parade was also scaled back due to fears that Ukraine’s increasingly capable long-range drones might be used to attack the festivities or assassinate Putin. The Ukrainian government insisted it would never attack a civilian event, but safety fears were not alleviated until both sides committed to a short-term ceasefire over the weekend. Each side accused the other of violating that ceasefire in various ways, but the Victory Day parade went unmolested.
Putin’s gratitude to North Korea was not merely for putting some extra manpower into the diminished parade. Pyongyang sent about 15,000 troops to help Russia against Ukraine in addition to shipping copious amounts of rockets, artillery shells, and short-range missiles to Moscow. South Korean intelligence estimates that up to 6,000 of those North Korean troops were killed or wounded.
Nikkei Asia reported on Monday that North Korea was rewarded very handsomely for its support, raking in an estimated $13 billion in payments over the past three years for its munitions and mercenaries.
The annual GDP of North Korea’s famished communist tyranny is only about $17 billion, according to United Nations estimates, so those military sales to Russia were a massive cash windfall for Pyongyang.
The money will likely keep rolling in. Nikkei Asia reported that Moscow “is believed to have paid more than $600 million for the North Korean troop deployments in just over a year since autumn 2024.”
According to a South Korean lawmaker who visited Ukraine in February, about 10,000 of those troops are still in the combat zone, plus hundreds of drone operators and other support troops — and another 30,000 North Korean soldiers could be coming.
The North Korean soldiers are not paid much — allegedly about $2,000 a month in salary plus a $10,000 “death benefit” — but Pyongyang reportedly supplements their meager pay with heroic treatment at home and benefits for the families of fallen troops.
In a way, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a stroke of incredible good fortune for North Korea which was struggling to deal with heavy international sanctions over its nuclear missile program until Putin began splurging on troops and munitions for his Ukraine war. South Korean analysts believe war sales to Russia since 2024 pushed North Korea to its highest GDP growth rate in a decade.
The Victory Day march could also feed North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s appetite for military legitimacy by tangibly demonstrating the depth of the partnership between Pyongyang and Moscow.
“By marching in Russia’s Victory Day parade for the first time, North Korea showed off its military ties with Russia,” South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Yoon Min-ho said at a press briefing on Monday.
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